wasn't just three countries bald was negotiating with, it was 102. so it was one of the large rounds of trade and so i wanted to read about help bald negotiated through congress. the bill in the passing 395-7 in-house and 90-for in the senate and after the vote came in ball with said to the domestic policy advisor who are the seven who voted against my bill. [laughter] so he expected a victory and he got one and this was a controversy will build and he got his three injured 95-some boat so at this point to the negotiating and he's trying to sell it in congress and this was

the point at which the kennedy round was unsuccessful because the congress didn't in the passing legislation needed to enact it. there wouldn't be the trade agreement until april but they thought would be foolish to leave for the product to begin selling it. once the present the bill to congress would be on a special fast-track legislative pass introduced by the trade act of 74 which dictated once the bill was presented in congress no changes could be made, no amendments could be added and no filibusters would be permitted. so his team included congressional staff coming up with legislation. he wanted there to be no surprises. i am not a fool he said in a congressional hearing before the house ways and means committee in july, 1978. - i know balance when i see it and i know political reality. i will not drop a baby on your doorstep and say take care of it. he might be a midwife for

something in the process and we will be working with the committee closely. in an unorthodox move seldom seen he even invited senior congressional staff into the highly sensitive for and negotiations. he wanted them to have as much risk in the outcome as he did. she worked the hill like crazy. people love them that they're republicans and democrats and bob have a wonderful credibility. the him he was a very successful chairman of the party. strauss earned his reputation for being a man who could work across the aisle. he reflected on his developer by partisanship a 1979 congressional hearing with a representative charles comment on how they have so far achieved bipartisan cooperation in the trade legislation. we truly have. what has impressed me is i've come from a partisan position as the chairman of the democratic party. don't tell me you're going to move to the other side. it's comforting smuggling of to my republican friends over here

to the the glove while i was partisan i was accused of taking cheap shots along the way. i think that is one of the main differences in politics than in politics today is the cheap shot along the way to deal with congress ends with the europeans she found out with the other fellow have to have to read as he told journalists before the passage of the bill the things you were on the hill are not free. you are in them. the reason i can get things done is it because a prison devotee. it's because i worry about their business. the personality will carry you so far. you have to deliver. if you can show the average person in congress how he can go right away in the world and average member of the house and senate can do with the issue is all the time. although he made it easy for most legislators to go along with them he encountered criticism both from protectionists who felt he swiveled congress into supporting him and from the free traders who thought they'd

timoney side deals such as when he sacrificed bourbon to protect the tobacco and wendell for word what the seat in kentucky to produce. journalists and to the plight of stirring carter and strauss for giving away wrote in his 1990 book trade wars against america has the congress been mesmerized by many empty promises as ambassador strauss fired at in the spring of that. year a decade later it possible to look back on the carnage brought by the 1979 trade act and wondered how congress could have been so gullible. he called the act like all of its predecessors since the roosevelt sponsored all of 1934 the fraud. his promises were not entirely empty which meant a free trade secure him. strauss had gone interest group interest group in the u.s. the farmers, the steel people and cut separate deals and meet site use some of which i have to say

i didn't learn about until later albeit with evidence. after he left to be the middle east negotiator used to joke every week one of the groups to whom he promised something would call it asked the commitment they gave him. although the free trade advocates and critics fear of the tokyo held for years to come to congress was obviously satisfied with the job because the way they finessed the bill the act of 1979 passed almost unanimously. july 11th 1979 the house passed the bill three pittard 95-7 made on july 23rd of 1979 the past it monday-4. carter noted in july 23rd 1979 he was disappointed with the coverage of the passage of the bill which he considered to be a great achievement of his administration he also wrote "washington post" editor ben bradlee the following note: other than the headline notice and on capitol hill, the post didn't mention the passage of

the trade active was different in '72. strauss and the congress deserve the recognition and it's important to find a reader, jimmy carter. in 1986 roughly friend straus with whom he joked easily forwarded the note from carter riding i was over this morning putting in another million dollars of "washington post" stock and i found these things quarter ended up. what did you pay him to write me this? and all kidding aside strauss was disappointed and said when i got the next morning they couldn't wait to read the marvelous story of what a wonderful we had in robert l. strauss. he's like to have cared less about the stuff and he said this in the presence of his staff. there wasn't a damn lie near i almost had a stroke. but for his work on the realm on january 16th 1981, and this was after he had run carper's feel free election bid, so he always

joked he had the two divisions in life one was to be president and one was to retire to planes. they helped them achieve both. so any wage increase 16th 1981 they lost the election and he presented him the presidential medal of freedom which is the highest honor leading at the time the following citation. for americans politics is the art of the possible through intelligence, ability and french ships earned during the service as the leader of the party and the nation robert strauss has refined into a science with diligence, persistence he concluded the multilateral trade negotiations at a time when many believed they were doing a failure. strengthening the trade which links the nation's in the interdependent world reserve our gratitude and respect. so that was the end of the

treaty and he knew nothing about the trade coming into it. he always liked to joke she didn't have much substance to him but he would get at the crack of dawn yet he had his staff to make him flashcards with all the acronyms on them. he was a quick study and he always joked i'm a quick study but not very deep. he obviously got deep into these issues helping to negotiate to peace in the middle east court in yet another job he had no and then again under the republican and administration as mentioned george h. w. bush appointed him ambassador scotia and he said at the time and the "washington post" on no russia expert but i never knew anything about any job i had until i got there and that is something else you can't say today and have your appointment go through.

it was a different time in the press and also in the congress there's a lot less futrell, and was funny to read the hearing for his nomination at some point on my computer i would do a control s to find the word laughter because whoever was typing it would write laughter and you could see the jokes he was making during his nomination hearings. so he had congress in his pockets and that doesn't happen probably for the best. i would be happy to take questions now. [applause] >> if you could come up to the microphone savimbi part of the recording. if nobody does i have a lot of questions.

>> where is he now? >> he is going to be 93 next week and she still lives at the watergate where he has been living since the 70's and he still goes in and has lunch with the front page which is the restaurant in the building which is where the law firm is located. >> i want to thank you. it's nice to see young people engaged. my name is larry and i appreciate politics and prose for giving this platform. it's a wonderful opportunity. not so much a question but what you said before was true there are few people who can cross the line anymore and as an american citizen i've gotten depressed because i'm tired of being covered by people who lack more common sense than i do and i set

the bar pretty low so i would like to know what kind of relationship, what kind of relationship you have with bob and how did they grow? he's your great uncle not even your first. how much did he contribute to this book? does he like the book? thank you. >> thank you for coming out the he is lying great uncle. my mother is his first meese and she is sitting in the audience. i grew up very close to my granddaughter and he grew up in dallas and that is bob's brother so we saw bob post thanksgivings and christmases and sometimes passover and during the summer he spent all his time in del mar

going to the racetrack and is the chairman of the board at 93. he and his wife helen would give me and my sister eskimo pie chocolate popsicle and i thought there was the only place you could get them. he was like the eskimo pie suppliers of that is all we knew of him then and then will i start on the project i lived in washington a few months and found quite frequently than we have a lot of discussions but he knew his memory was and what it used to be and he was worried about that and about getting that information so he gave me access to over 70 interviews he had done with a ghost writer back in the 90's when he was striking to write his memoirs and for the most part they were written but it was an unsuccessful project for many

reasons and one is that it's very hard to capture his voice. i would never have tried to undertaken a biography or ghost write his memoirs because he is funny and it's difficult to capture that if you are not him yet he had such a positive attitude through his life and it's what helped him remain successful even when he trade representatives and was constantly being criticized she said he would make it in the morning and like his wound in the shower and get all my tuesday to veto remember his day i did leave to go beyond a and i had the best time at the library especially there's a chapter in the book that looks at bob as

carter's ambassador to the middle east peace process so he sent them a further to hold them. carter fought the secretary of state were spending too much time on the process so he wanted to send a personal representative he could trust to sort of help secret process and this was a very tense time in his life. he didn't get along very well with brzezinski the national security adviser because they wanted him to be under the ministry department and bob wanted them to report as president and bob a few years later said he was right and he was wrong and he should have been reporting back to the state. a lot of what i learned about bob is it from him. i learned about his warmth and personality and good sense of

humor but as far as what he was doing on a day-to-day basis and the dialogue in the situation room it's been released and is that the carter library and you can research at so a lot of what i have in your didn't come from my family it came from the archives. [inaudible] >> i wouldn't give him editorial control over the book and that is because i had just come out of journalism school. i was all my our lady and i said no you can't read the manuscript or reprinting it and he didn't. his longtime assistant of 40 years did read in the early copy mostly for the major but i have

also fact check the book on the phone so was sort of the way that i made sure i didn't have any major problems but he didn't have editorial control and i am still invited. [laughter] >> did he portrayal him fair? >> if you so -- i think so. i was a little nervous and he said i don't just like it, i love it and that is the kind of thing he would say and to ensure there were parts he didn't love. he was very sensitive about being called a lobbyist and on the address that in the book and he was sensitive about it for good reason because he did to a loss of work a lobbyist might do but there were different standards at the time in she

never did anything i knew of a legal bill would require him to register as a lobbyist but i don't think that would have been in his own book. >> who were the earliest to get into politics could he get into state politics first but what was his relationship with johnson and do you remember exchanges he had about the vietnam war matt? >> he was the first to get into politics, and he mainly got in the through the john connally who would become governor of texas, and john connally in 1959 ran into him in the street in polis and strauss was a lawyer in dallas at the time in the koln alisa i'm getting a group

of fellows together to go to washington to talk about johnson's presidential nomination if you want to come along and that was the beginning of the end. he went along and helped support the nomination effort in 1960 which was field. kennedy won that year but after that, because, lee was his protege strauss became one step closer when johnson became vice president in the event in dallas when kennedy was assassinated he was one of the hosts don't tell me and he was very involved in all of that and one thing and wrote it in the book it's right for people to doubt will help to the i would definitely doubt myself to activity but i try to be more skeptical so when he would tell the stories about being in the hospital comforting

moly after her husband got shot because he was shot also in the was a little skeptical and i went along and the reason it is in the book is because of the johnson library they had the collection and a record of everyone who visited him in the hospital and he was there on the day of the shooting so he was extremely close to connally and they became close to johnson and johnson did give him some advice which was not to be treasurer of the democratic party because he said dealing with the plea will get you in trouble you shouldn't do that and he did it any way then he called him a similar ranch when he was running for the chairman of the party and advise him not to run for the chairman of the party so they were friendly with the relationship was through, --

connely. he supported the president first and foremost it felt partisanship into the water's edge and he felt his party was in power but he supported johnson on vietnam and he later said he regretted that and wished wynn johnson asked about the vietnam he would tell them she was against the war but publicly he was doing his best the convention to get all the votes she needed to support the plan and so she was always behind the candidate first and foremost and he put his own public policy ideals second. johnsonville intimidated him and that's another reason he always used to say he didn't tell

johnson the truth about the vietnam he decided he would tell the president the truth if he were asked and it turns out almost every president after johnson did ask him for advice at one time or another and including ronald reagan even though he had been in the carter and administration and from the campaign against ronald reagan nancy reagan to arrange for strauss and the former secretary of state bill rodgers to sneak into the white house one evening of the print through the treasury building through the underground tunnel. bob had never been through the underground tunnel before. he couldn't believe he was there. he went to the residents of the white house about what to do on

the iran contra scandal and he advised him to get rid of the stuff and to bring in someone like a word baker who had a lot of credibility in congress with both sides of the arnall had a lot of relationships with the press and nancy reagan took this to heart and at the time strauss didn't think the president was listening because the president disagreed and said would never do that and not when to fire reagan and that is what he said when he got home that might then he got a call from nancy reagan and she said i don't suppose there is a way you would want to help us over here in the white house would you and he declined deutsch said that would not be a good idea for anyone involved but several weeks later done was fired and howard baker was brought in the chief of staff and in his memoir they said why

bob strauss who had everything to gain from rican falling out of grace? and it's true bob was the democrat partisan but everyone knew bob knew he was a streak shooter and he was going to tell brigham the truth and give the best advice he could. he loved being called to serve. he said he never turned down a president and that is how he ended up over 70 years of age and a communist country in moscow he turned down bush for that ambassadorship and decided you can't turn down the president said he always tried to do his best. >> was the great line -- >> the jim wright to the 80's he said i don't know who the next

president will be but i can tell you who the best friend will be, bob strauss and he had a reputation for getting close to the president, whoever he was and one of my favorite stories and i got it as i was finishing the book and i was excited i went and interviewed tom brokaw and he told me a story about when they were in ohio for the presidential debate between carter and reagan and bob was excluded from the prop. the takeover if they knew he would be free for lunch and they said they would have one martini a piece then they said they would split one more so they split one more. a leader in the afternoon they are still drinking and he says you know your fellow was going to lose and to bring new people.

you will be out of power. he says watch. so he knew his fellow wasn't going to win the devotee would stay in power to better who was in the white house. >> he had his way i read the president. >> bob did get his way. >> for the peace in the middle east. >> he was ambassador to the peace negotiations for a short time several months in 1979 and because of all of the attention he was creating in the state they decided to bring him back and run the campaign and they thought he would be better served as the chairman of the campaign.

>> what is going on in the political arena? do you know if he told you -- >> i don't care how he feels but i know he wishes that it were more like it was 30 years ago when people were partisan politics in the that the cocktail hour and republicans and democrats had drinks together and when politics and did at the water's edge putting a public face for the rest of the world america came together. >> can you talk about the relationship to george mcgovern in the 1972 convention? >> yes i heard that you were a mcgovernites. strauss didn't have anything about mcgovern and vice versa if they felt the others were nice

fellows but bob flout mcgovern current wim the nomination and most democrats outside of the camp didn't think that he could win the nomination and after 1972 convention which bald went into as the treasurer of the party paying for that convention he came out of a jobless so flurrying back home he said i'm going to start working to get my hand on the party machinery but he didn't do anything to hurt the campaign is dhaka was surprised to learn to defend who make governors i didn't think that he would be that involved in the campaign but inslee was reading through the transcript of the meeting of the chairwoman

bald did help them raise money and give emergency computers. he wasn't going to stand by and let them nominee go without funds but he really focused his effort on the fund-raising for congress and even though there was a sweep for nixon democrats did well win 72 and in congress and bald was very committed to that and i interviewed mcgovern by phone and he said he thought bob was a that a lot said after the convention and he had every right to the. he had done a lot of hard work and there was some noticed and mcgovern made commitments especially women's groups that he would appoint machine westwood who was unknown and not really tested politically. she was the representative from

utah that he promised to her and the guard was out and win strauss became the chairman he left before they were asked. >> was accused of being a racist? i heard the rumor. >> the question is about mcgovern believe racist which seems very not true. >> a wonder. heard -- >> [inaudible] >> bob would have liked to have been handed the presidency i think but he did what to run for office he preferred being behind the scenes and he said if he ran

for the house he would have to go round and eat barbecue with everybody in america and kiss the everybody's ass gusev i like when everybody's kissing my ass. laughter, he pointed to hand out the check and not be on the receiving end of the check. >> he went to be the power [inaudible] >> there was talk in the 80's. i was surprised with "the new york times" was running about is bob strauss going to be our first president and he would always say he is foolish enough to run the rumors but not to pay attention to them. senator think that he was the first jewish president of the fellowship. >> almost. that is the young people's union. are you from texas?

i can't tell. [laughter] when bob growing up in texas and a small town about three or 4,000 people in texas he was born and in 1999 and there were only to the jewish people in this town and that is because his cousins were also living there. [laughter] that means they were totally integrated into the guilaume to the club if they were very restrictive people a and whammo got his fbi file because speed him as an fbi agent in world war ii, it turned out no one forgot you were jewish and they were interviewing the townspeople so it was relevant but it wasn't relevant to bob as he was growing up. she didn't see anti-semitism and and as i said in the book he thought the cutest girls were at the baptist young people's union

so that's where he was and he wanted to give elected president of the union, but the minister -- i am also jewish so i have no idea when talking about but he said he couldn't beat the he always says if it weren't for the he would have been elected president. sometimes he tells the story and says he was elected president in the half to take it back because the excellent he was jewish. among his peers it wasn't that big of an issue. when he got to the university of texas the student body was larger than the town he grown up and it did become an issue. he was only invited to pledge the jewish fraternities and it was kind of a rude awakening for him. he did not know there would be the case because he always enjoyed a surge in popularity. so he managed to be the one in his paternity to represent the other paternity. he got out of what could have

become a bubble for him and was popular across campus and he became member of the cowboys, which if you are from texas you know it is a very prestigious and popular group, the texas cowboys. for a jewett is pretty popular. [laughter] >> i have one question. anybody else have a question? we were talking about this earlier. who help their even comes close today to being bob strauss? >> we decided no one. a lot has changed since bob's type. there's a lot more money in politics which means people are going home on the weekend to campaign. there is in the relationship there was in congress and also

the press can't protect politicians the way the protected bob strauss. he could say the most outrageous thing and it didn't affect his career so having that kind of larger-than-life personality doesn't work in this climate but also being someone who doesn't buy into the ideology and chest is practical and wants to negotiate and to compromise people are having to listen to their districts a lot more. i probably know less about this than anyone else in the room, but it would be very hard to have another bob strauss for many reasons; climate and also because of his character. kathryn

>> thank you. if you could pull up your chairs we would be appreciative. the book is in the front it kathryn would be happy to sign copies for anyone. >> the idea of this book was born out of frustration and the idea crystallized for me that the first and only time i flew on air force 1i have taken this job for the "washington post" had been working for a while where it was my assignment to write more personal intimate stories about the presidency and with the president's life is like and it only took me like maybe a week of doing the chop to realize the president doesn't really have personal moments certainly none that i would get access to. everything about his life is

outsourced the miscreancy way. he has 94 but words and maids. people make his schedule every day. it is an army that helps him operate in this the way and his schedule is divided into these 50 minute chunks and there's a secretary who sit till side of the oval office which has a reverse people so she can looking at him and make sure the laws are running on schedule. he calls it the bubble and sometimes it really drives him crazy. in a few weeks i've been doing the job it's been driving me crazy and my editors lot riding as many stories as i was hoping lead lot to get into the personal moments so finally might turn came to fly on the air force one and the way that

it works is pretty much ready that covers the president like your name is put into this huge database and every time the president goes on a trip they move through the database and more people get their turn to fly on air force one so my name came up and i found this is the moment i'm going to see something and be up close and have a chance to experience with this is like a little bit for him, so got dressed up and he flies out of the private airforce base in virginia, got dressed up and rented the car to drive over there because it was like a battered pontiac grand am we kept from functional it didn't feel appropriate to plumb to airforce one. [laughter] still weave into the carcass and drove over there with fees and other reporters and as we waited

for our term to board the plane we waited for me be in our. there are two entrances on the air force one. they led us up the back one which is by far freer of the airplane. we've walked up the stairs and sat down. they said we've here we are waiting for the president to arrive for the airport. we waited for maybe half an hour then we heard okay the president is a rising at the airport but he's never seen reporters moved this fast. there was a scramble to get back off the plane to watch the president's motorcade and then we watched him walk six steps up the front of the plane so those six steps were illuminating. we saw what he was wearing in what he was doing and we were frantically taking notes about it. we got back on the plane, we flew to new hampshire, we scrambled off the plane as fast as we cut to watch the president

what the steps again into his motorcade. we followed behind separately. this event there was not enough time or space for the press to go into that even with him so we were off site in the satellite location where we watched on the closed-circuit tv and we were taking notes of that way so i was sitting there just feeling frustrated with trillion to write to the presidency in any kind of meaningful way and i was listening to the speech and i heard him say something i heard him talk about before that just sort of clicked. he talked about the ten letters that he reads every light which are a sampling of the 20,000 letters that come into the white house every day and he talked about how they were what he felt like were his only direct connection left to people out in the country knew the people he governed and he said they were the same as those that kept him sane when he was irritated from

so many other things and i realized pretty quickly then that was something that seemed personally and real and genuine and something i wanted to write about. so that's what i did. it started with a story from the post. i wrote a longer piece with the process of getting the letters to the desk and the paper was generous enough to give me the leave for a year where i did go to montana and totally eliminated at professor title now but when delta their approach and at the end of this year finally did get time on the president's schedule we're not secretary was looking into the people. we talked about the letter and i will read a brief part of the bucknell from that half hour i had. the president said the hardest letters to read were those that meet him feel powerless.

people tended to write on the circumstances turned higher. it is a matter of laughter. what resulted each day in the purple folder was an intimate view of hardship and personal struggle a wave of desperation capable of overwhelming the census. so many needed urgent help obama said in the act of government was so slow sometimes it to kirs before legislation could improve people's lives. a few times during the presidency obama had been so moved by the letter that he had written a personal check or made a phone call on their behalf believing it was the only way to ensure that past result. it's not something i should advertise but it's happened. many other times he for with letters to the government agencies or cabinet secretaries after touching a standard handwritten note that redican you please take care of this? these can be heartbreaking, just heartbreaking he said. some will say i really want to help this person and by not have

the tools to help him right now then you start thinking of the fact for every one person describing the story there might be another 100,000 going through the same thing so there are times when reading the letters and i feel pain i can't do more faster to make a difference in their lives. he said sometimes the white house made him point for his days as community organizer back in the 80's when he was making $10,000 a year and working on the south side of chicago. and just graduated from college and purchased $2,000 spent his days driving around the projects to speak with residents about their lives. he became familiar with the same issues. housing calamities,, and unemployment and struggling in school. scuffle organizers in chicago considered him a master of the dream of a problem solving to refuse a good listener but still minute and some of the women in the housing projects made a habit of inviting them into

their homes and cooking. he looked around the apartment keeping the law the and delivering on that list to the landlord and helped arrange meetings with the city housing officials to talk about the problem he established the rights organization founded in the job-training program and the group that prepares students for college. when he left for harvard law school after a few years in chicago obama said his path for the future. he wanted to become a politician, the job that would allow him to listen to people's problems and enjoy the simple satisfaction of solving them. now he was the most powerful politician of all and fixing problems seemed more difficult and satisfaction more elusive. the people were there in front of the and i could say let's go to the office or let me be enough to kick in some fashion, obama said. here because the nature of the office and scope of the issue your move in ways that are frustrating. sometimes when you want to do is pick up the phone and say tell me more about what is going on

and what we see if i can be your social worker advocate, your mortgage advisor, your counselor. so what we have to reconcile in my mind is to have a very specific role to play in this office and i have to make a bunch of big decisions to open the aggregate of having a positive effect for this many lives the you can't always be certain. there was one of the reasons obama had taken by hand a few letters each night. he liked the satisfaction of providing one thing immediate and concrete. "the new york times" released the top ten best books of 2011. here are the five non-fiction titles. ..